Tracking what's tops started with books

But despite the sameness of American interests, the author maintains that there is no way to tell what books by unknowns will make it big, given that reader curiosity is so unpredictable. That might explain how a volume called "The Specialist," about building outhouses, sold more than 1.5 million copies in the 1920s and was on display next to cash registers for years. Perhaps during the turbulent '20s, people had a desire to recall a simpler time, Korda suggests.

Other top sellers had their roots in the changing face of the country, like Emily Post's "Etiquette," also from the '20s. To a nation full of immigrants and people moving from lower to middle class, a primer explaining thank-you notes and seating arrangements was invaluable, Korda says.

Americans over the years often have turned to books to explain current events. One exception was the 1960s, when very few books about the civil rights movement or the Vietnam war made the bestseller list. Maybe activists were too busy to write at the time, or publishing houses were too shell-shocked or embarrassed about their own lack of minorities in decisionmaking roles to pick winners, Korda muses in his book. Still, he wonders if the omission on the lists shows "some sign that a lot of people were busy buying cookbooks while the house burned."

1. Coniston by Winston Churchill [an American novelist]

2. Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister

3. The Fighting Chance by Robert Chambers

4. The House of a Thousand Candles by Meredith Nicholson

5. Jane Cable by George Barr McCutcheon

6. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

7. The Awakening of Helena Ritchie by Margaret Deland

8. The Spoilers by Rex Beach

9. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

10. The Wheel of Life by Ellen Glasgow

1. Exodus by Leon Uris

2. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

3. Hawaii by James Michener

4. Advise and Consent by Allen Drury

5. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence

6. The Ugly American by William J. Lederer and Eugene L. Burdick

7. Dear and Glorious Physician by Taylor Caldwell

8. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

9. Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris by Paul Gallico

10. Poor No More by Robert Ruark

1. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien; edited by Christopher Tolkien

2. The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

3. Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, by Richard Bach

4. The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carré

5. Oliver's Story by Erich Segal

6. Dreams Die First by Harold Robbins

7. Beggarman, Thief by Irwin Shaw

8. How to Save Your Own Life by Erica Jong

9. Delta of Venus: Erotica by Anaïs Nin

10. Daniel Martin by John Fowles

1. The Partner by John Grisham

2. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

3. The Ghost by Danielle Steel

4. The Ranch by Danielle Steel

5. Special Delivery by Danielle Steel

6. Unnatural Exposure by Patricia Cornwell

7. The Best Laid Plans by Sidney Sheldon

8. Pretend You Don't See Her by Mary Higgins Clark

9. Cat & Mouse by James Patterson

10. Hornet's Nest by Patricial Cornwell

11. The Letter by Richard Paul Evans

12. Flood Tide by Clive Cussler

13. Violin by Anne Rice

14. The Matarese Countdown by Robert Ludlum

15. Plum Island by Nelson DeMille

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